Dilemma

Minimal treatment for this ripe crop picture.

The current farmers' dilemma is when to start the harvest. This sudden and extreme hot spell following on months of record breaking rain is drying the ground and drying the crops nicely. Dry crops are better than damp ones.

If you go early, you will harvest the wheat but you may have to pay to get it dried, and this reduces the profits. If you wait, the rains might return and lay the top heavy plants down, making them difficult to harvest.

Full treatment on this image of a Rape seed crop. I used extreme amounts of shadow and highlight correction to produce a HDR like image, with further shading in the sky and foreground.

All this treatment was intended to inject life into an otherwise static image of a crop waiting its fate. In this case the seeds are not ready, they haven't turned black.

I note that a mere fifteen minutes in the sun was enough to burn my arms. When the sun finally does come out it does so with a vengeance...